Rep. Robert J. Wittman, R-1st, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the attacks give Obama a new opportunity to talk directly with Israel.

“We need to be in a position to have candid conversations about strategic actions in the Middle East,” said Wittman, who recently returned from an eight-day trip to Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain and Afghanistan.

Wittman called for the world community to “bring more political and diplomatic solutions” to the region.

Seriously, someone tell me what the heck he just said.

At least Eric Cantor (who’s a Jew, as the RT-D so diligently pointed out) had the guts to say that Israel had the right to defend itself; Wittman couldn’t even be bothered to say that.

What “strategic actions in the Middle East” does Wittman want to have “candid conversations” about?

Withdrawing from Iraq or Afghanistan?

Screwing over Israel?

Or is just empty platitudes that sound like something a ninth grader would write for an English paper?

And if Wittman is relying on the world community to “‘bring more political and diplomatic solutions’ to the region”, then Israel is really screwed. When you have the majority of the coward Europeans condemning Israel for defending its citizens, there’s something seriously wrong in this world.

Amazing, both the Palestinian Authority (via Mahmoud Abbas) and the Egyptian government condemned Hamas. But that has more to do with realpolitik, than with any support for the state of Israel: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — which Hamas is an offshoot of — is constantly fighting with the Egyptian government and Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party is the rival of Hamas for the control of the Palestinian territories.

She never saw herself as a trailblazer. Yet the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down interracial marriage bans, was Loving’s doing. Years after she and her white husband were thrown out of Virginia for having the gall to wed, Loving wrote Robert F. Kennedy, who was moved to action. Sometimes a single voice is all it takes.

Mildred Loving, 68 In 1958, Virginia police arrested the Lovings in their bedroom for violating state miscegenation laws. Inspired by Martin Luther King and encouraged by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, Loving took her case to the Supreme Court, which in 1967 struck down the last segregation law. She always claimed her act was personal, not political, but on the 40th anniversary of the court decision, she spoke out for the rights of gays to marry, eloquently passing the baton to the next generation.

Plaintiffs include Carl Helfin, Kathy Bullock, Gilbert and Judy Shelton, Joe and Patricia Parker, and John and Lois Garrett. There are 12 plaintiffs in total. Not all are listed on the online Circuit Court records so I can’t tell you all the people involved.

Defendants are the Caroline County Board of Supervisors, the County of Caroline, Clark’s Cut II LLC, and Emmet Snead.

Not sure what the plaintiffs are alleging. I’ll drop by the Circuit Court tomorrow and see what has been filed in the case (which will also give me a list of all 12 plaintiffs).

With a record amount of commercial real-estate debt coming due, some of the country’s biggest property developers have become the latest to go hat-in-hand to the government for assistance.

They’re warning policymakers that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed into defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The reason: according to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years — with about $160 billion maturing in the next year. Credit, meanwhile, is practically nonexistent and cash flows from commercial property are siphoning off.

Had Paulson and the White House stuck with the original TARP plan — the one authorized by Congress — they would have bought back the mortgage-backed securities that the government mandated from the bad loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The credit markets would have eventually stabilized and the credit would have been forthcoming. Instead, Paulson and Bush decided to convert TARP into a political support system, picking winners and losers among ailing entities for no better purpose than to shore up voter support.

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

Congressman Rob Wittman announced the award of a conservation grant of $855,465 for the phase two acquisition of Crow’s Nest in Stafford, Virginia. The grant money, to be awarded in 2009, will cover the purchase of 1100 additional acres.

Meanwhile, Caroline County doesn’t have the money to do anything with an extremely dangerous intersection at Route 207 and I-95.

Oh well, we got money to pay for a swamp.

Bulldoze Crow’s Nest.

And if anyone is interested, I have some land west of Miami I want to sell you.

Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery.

[…]

Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26.

“We believe this proposal shows that management and labor can work together to craft a reasonable, financially responsible short-term survival plan,” said McGiggles. “After the new Congress is seated in January, we would be happy to return to present a long-term package to get us through April.”

[…]

“You might say it’s a perfect snowstorm,” said Merrill Lynch analyst Jennifer Rothstein. “The youth consumer market is demanding more for less, at a time when the government and courts have forced SantaCorp to lower its ‘good list’ credit rating standards. They face increased non-union competition from the East Pole, and huge increases in fuel prices for magical reindeer flying hay. It’s a hard sell for the investment community.”

[…]

“Almost every business in my district has had to adjust to the new economic climate, but SantaCorp seems to believe it can continue with the same old profligate giveaway business-as-usual,” said Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin). “I’m sorry for your situation, but it is difficult to justify giving trillions of US taxpayer dollars to a private company that is outmoded, headquartered offshore, and, frankly, imaginary.”

Kringle defended the company’s business practices and his reported 4 billion cookie annual salary, saying that the company was “doing the best we can under trying circumstances.” He also blamed the company’s struggles in part on federal environmental and safety regulations.

“Frankly the amount of paperwork you require is astronomical,” said Kringle. “OSHA inspections and reporting requirements have doubled our factory production cycle, and every time I tramp a little fireplace soot into a living room I have to fill out three separate EPA environmental impact reports.”

[…]

A full House vote on the SantaCorp is scheduled Friday morning, where it is expected to pass by a comfortable margin. President Bush has pledged to sign any and all bailout request from Congress until the end of his term, “no queshnions ast.”

“I want to insurer the American People and the evil doers that I and the Crongress and the Hankster [Treasury Sec. Paulsen] and Big Ben [possibly Fed Chair Bernanke] and [unintelligible] and me are unineted together to approve the financial aid and regulations and federal takeovers to get our American free ennerpise system back on track,” said the President, speaking from inside his new shoe-proof plexiglas enclosure.

Pompous blow-hard Joe Scarborough decided to make a big point of it during his interview with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty this morning.

Since then, the story has made the Washington Times and WTOP. Both of those stories are linked off of the Drudge Report as well.

Now, the last I checked, people get robbed, raped, or killed in D.C. almost everyday. None of those stories make it onto Drudge, or even the Washington Times or WTOP in some cases.

I’m not sure whether to attribute this to economic status (rich people hate it when stuff happens to them) or racial status (ditto for the crackers).

An affluent, white couple gets killed in N.W. D.C. and the media reports “detectives are working overtime” to catch their killers. Within 24 hours, their killer is arrested and within 48 hours, an accomplice is also arrested.

Meanwhile, there are dozens of open cases for shootings and murders in Trinidad this year that haven’t been closed.

Or maybe it’s just sheer arrogance on the media’s part?

I remember back in the early or mid ’90s (back when D.C. was real bad) when some reporter for a local affiliate got carjacked, the news station had a month long exposé on the traumatic effects of carjacking and how to protect yourself from being carjacked (no mention of owning a gun through!), etc. It was just nauseating.

It also reminds me of the media’s treatment of casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan. When a soldier, seaman, Marine, or airmen gets killed, the story goes something like this: “[Rank of person injured] [name] was killed in Iraq as a result of [cause of death]. This marks the [insert number]th American military personnel killed in the conflict.”

However, when a reporter or “journalist” gets injured or killed: “The injury of [reporter’s name] has brought the war home for us here at [insert network]. Reporter [name] was injured in Iraq today. Correspondent [name] has an extended story on [reporter’s name]’s injuries and reactions from his family and from his friends at [employer name].”

The whole display is just nauseating, they don’t care when military personnel get killed, but if a reporter or “journalist” gets hurt you hear about it for a week. I guess they think since they’re part of a privileged class (the media), nothing bad should happen to them. No one would ever want to rob, carjack, or kill them.

The lowly serfs (people not in the media) should get that treatment but not the graduates of journalism school! After all, they’re out to make the world a better place!